Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Waterfront Studio, Carnforth

Compelled to act on a tip from Torley Torgeson, the sim of Carnforth contains a thingy of Cottonteil Muromachi's that I do indeed like :)

This waterfront studio (Carnforth 243,206), like many coastal builds, is perched high above a sloping interface between water and landfall. However, unlike the passive 'good life' implied by many of these builds, Muromachi's studio appears to be more motivational in nature - inhabiting the build one cannot help but be engaged in a kind of creative provocation brought about by the tension between cleverly expressed and differentiated architectural elements. This tension begins from the ground up with a pair of brittle structural frames holding up flat slabs that are themselves wrested apart by solid infill walls so as to seemingly force the interior space into existence, with the end result of framing a void between these two enclosed volumes replete with inserted circulation elements that join the two and provide exterior deck space .

This studio was bumped up in the queue of builds to review because it seems to tie in nicely to SL forum posts (and this one in particular) reacting to the discussion of Architecture (available via streaming video) at this year's State of Play Conference. This build appears to be a good example of the way in which the 'reality' of a site condition can not only be addressed but used as a jumping off point from which to bend the rules implied by that condition for a kind of perceptual impact that might not otherwise be possible in RL architecture, without needing to resort to yet another re-interpretation of Gibsonian deck-punching abstractions first envisioned over 20 years ago.

I think these whip-thin spindly legs arranged with braces are an excellent solution to the ubiquitous problem of how to handle these sloping SL waterfront parcels. I love Carnforth and the interesting builds going on there, whether the classic Statue of Liberty or the barbed-wire GULAG sort of thing we had there for awhile. I'm looking forward to seeing this build inworld.